It was a brave, lofty goal. 24 miles in 2 days. But it was time I challenged myself and really tested how much I'd grown as a paddler this summer. So we set it all up and hit the water.
We made it easy on ourselves by doing the trip where we didn't have to take all our gear in the boat. That I will consider tackling next summer. Not a lot different from backpacking, except for the waterproof aspect, but with rental kayaks we couldn't plan well. Would we have one dry basin or two? Could I store beer behind my seat or not? So instead we chose an awesome company that picks you up at your campsite, shuttles you to the start of the trip, you paddle to camp. On day two you paddle to the company's office and they shuttle you back to the campsite/your car. Easy stuff, for sure. But with my first long voyage I didn't know how sore I'd be and not carting gear all over creation sounded nice.
Anyway, we actually only ended up doing Day 1 because it started pouring down rain early Sunday morning. When we woke up it was wet and gross. We considered going ahead with the day but when it got down to it, 11 miles in the rain, probably about a 4 hour trip regularly, we were not too excited. It would be miserable. 5 miles we probably would have just gone and knocked it out. But we were lame and bailed. I'm kind of disappointed in myself. But I also know it would have been so miserable. So next time I'll buck up.
Back to Saturday. We did 13.5 miles on Day 1. Which can either sound like a lot or lame, depending on your experience. I think the most I've ever done in a kayak was 8 miles and I was pretty dead afterwards. Luckily this trip was down river, so there were times you could just float and not paddle. Of course it's slow, so you don't get anywhere fast that way. It would have been past dark if we didn't paddle.
There were some small, Class I rapids on the trip. And I loved them. Rapids have always scared me, and anything more than this I will probably still avoid. But little ones are a lot of fun. Except you have to paddle before them to pick up speed and hit them right, and you have to paddle all the way through. Miles 10-12 were almost all rapids so that was exhausting.
Oh, and of course we had some beer on the water.
There were some hard miles where I couldn't believe how much further we still had to go. There were fun miles where we just goofed around and paddled in circles to be silly, chase fish/turtles/or check out cool rocks to climb on. "Think it's safe to belay from a kayak?"
We saw a surprising amount of cows.
Had to force the boy to take the camera and actually prove I was out there too. He was very scared of dropping it, so no rapid shots.
And then we floated into camp right before larger rapids. These weren't that bad, but the guy who dropped us off said a lot of people had been hitting them wrong and tipping, so we decided to walk our kayaks around camp and start on the other side the next morning. Of course we didn't go out again on Sunday, but it was a good plan.
After 13.5 miles I was pretty sore and I devoured some chicken and sweet potatoes. But I was surprisingly peppy and recovered quickly the next day, so I think I am ready to tackle more next time around.
